


Little Hope

by EyelessPhoenix



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-04 05:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2954516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyelessPhoenix/pseuds/EyelessPhoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Separated from his group, Carl Grimes comes upon a little town. Now, even with sanctuary, will Carl be able to survive long enough to find his group or will he die trying?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New Town, New Life

The group sat in front of a small fire, their hands in front of them. The winter weather was starting to become freezing, the moaning of dead creatures heard out from a distance. Nobody understood why it had happened, it just came out of nowhere. Out of the group though sat a 19 year old girl. Her brown hair which she had now chopped to her shoulders. It was thrown up in a ponytail, so that these things wouldn't grab at it and take a bite out of her neck or shoulder. Her younger brother had sat underneath her arm. They were usually the silent ones of the group, no one else questioned them about it though. She would hunt the food and he would go with her to make sure that they made it back without getting lost in the woods. 

There was also about 20 others, but those other 15 of them wouldn't make it, except for the other two who went on raids in the city and such. A blonde haired man, about 20, maybe 21 years of age. Then there was the final one of the group who was actually worth something. She had red hair and green eyes. People tended to call her strawberry, although her name was actually Bristol. She was about 15 years old, about the same age, maybe a little older than the boy. The others in the group though, they either practiced with gun training or they did some of the old style house hold duties such as cook, laundry, and as for the pregnant women of that group, they were told to relax so that the unborn children wouldn't be hurt. They lived in a somewhat nice living system, and found a great little town that they had built fences around so that those terrible creatures on the outside wouldn't get in. They had more than enough food at the moment to feed the town for a little more than a year, which was great because then, they wouldn't have to go out as often, trying to find supplies. 

Tonight was a bonfire night though for the people, to celebrate making it through the apocalypse for the second year now. They still stayed pretty quiet to not upset the creatures outside, that lurked everywhere, but they were still loud enough to enjoy themselves. There was the sound of a rock being thrown at the fence which caught the girl’s attention. At first she decided that it was probably the wind before the noise came up once again. She stood up and started to walk in the direction of the fence. "Arlette, where are you going?" her brother asked. She stood tall in her leader like figure, even though she was technically the leader of the group, and turned towards her brother. "Tyler, that was the second time that a rock has been thrown at the fence tonight. I'm going to check out what it is. Now, you can either come with me or stay behind," she said, before continuing to walk once more. Tyler decided to follow after her, gun in his waistband just in case something did come and try to hurt them. 

Arlette finally made it to the fence before calling out. "Who's there?" The sound of someone knocking desperately at the door sounded before she realized that it was an actual human. "Tyler, help me get the fence door open," she said. The two of them started to open the fence just enough for this person to get in. Once this boy was inside, they quickly closed the door slamming the boy against the wall. "Who are you? And also while you’re at it do you have any weapons on you?" The boy who looked about 14 or 15, looked up at the intimidating girl. "Yes... I have a gun on me," he said. "She asked you what your name was," Tyler told him. "Tyler shut up, please," Arlette said. "M...My name is Carl... I promise, I'm not going to hurt you or your group," he said. "Do you have a group?" Arlette pressed. "I did, but I got separated from them while running away from the walkers," he said. "The walkers?" Arlette asked. "Yeah, that's what they're called... Walkers, or zombies, either one," she said. Arlette nodded. "I guess we can take him to the group. Show him where he'll be staying. Till we know we can trust him not to do anything, take his weapon," she said. Tyler nodded. "Don't bother trying to leave without permission from me or Tyler, because if you can't follow that rule, we have watch guards up 24/7 who won't hesitate to put a bullet in you." she told him. 

"So what are you to this group? The leader? The brute?" he asked. "I'm the leader yes. You see, this place has been around since almost the beginning. Some people came by themselves, some of them were in my old group before we founded it. That's who the watch guards are," she told him. "We don't really have a name for the town though. No one has really come up with one, seeing as we're all just relaxing here, living out our lives until something happens, I guess," she said. "So basically you're saying that you don't have any hope of a cure for it?" he asked her. "We have scientists here, as well as doctors, food, water, we have enough to last us a couple of more years before we need to go on another raid," she said. "Wow," he said. "Yup, if we can, within the next few weeks, we'll even have electricity," she said. "Anyways, guys, this is Mason. He'll be staying with us and helping us out with things around here," Arlette said. "But we don't know whether or not we can trust him," an older lady, Helena said. "Exactly, that's why we took all of his weapons away.” He can help out with Laundry, cooking, and cleaning up around here," she responded. "I guess I can live with that," Helena mumbled. 

"Yasmine, want to show him to his room for tonight?" Arlette asked. "Sure," she said. "By the way Carl, breakfast is at 8. Better be up by then, you'll need your strength," she said with a small smirk playing on her lips. "Your going to make tomorrow a horrible day for him aren't you," Tyler said. "Oh yeah, we haven't had a newbie for a while now," she said as she watched him be taken to a small apartment that he would be living in. 

Carl was sound asleep as 7;30 hit before he had a blow horn blown into his ear, causing him to fall off of the bed. "Morning' sunshine, you get a nice and good sleep last night?" Tyler said with a laugh. "Man, did you have to be that loud?" he questioned Tyler with a moan to his voice. "Sorry, but its orders from my sister. Can't disobey her or else she'll go ogre on me. I can't do watch duty again," Tyler told him. "Speaking' of which, it's 7; 50, have fun finding the cafe," Tyler said walking out. He rubbed his eyes yawning before standing up and getting dressed into a pair of clothes that was put onto his bed and made his way around the building, trying to find the cafe. He finally found it running in. "2 minutes late, guess you have 2 extra chores to attend to today," Arlette said. The town snickered, remembering when they were in his position, then the snickers were actually because he was late. "Come on Carl, get your breakfast and eat," she told him. He went up to the food table seeing what there was. He grabbed 3 pieces of bacon, 2 eggs, a pancake, and a hash brown, before sitting down in front of Yasmine. 

"I see that Arlette is playing the whole newbie game again," she said. "What do you mean?" Carl asked her curiously. "Whenever we get a newbie here, Arlette always has Tyler wake them up late purposefully then leave them to find the cafe by themselves. Usually every newbie comes in late, and however long you go over the time limit, is how many extra chores you have. We haven't had a newbie in a while though, maybe 7 months," she said. Carl nodded. "Either way, she'll probably assign you to helping me out today so you won't have that many chores all in all," she said. "Has she always been this... Rude?" he asked her. "She's not rude, it's just that she doesn't trust you yet. She also lost her dad a few months back on a raid, which left her with the responsibility of being the leader of the group since she's the oldest," Yasmine explained. "Anyways, just wait for her to warm up to you, then you'll see," she said, picking up her empty plate and putting it in the sink.


	2. Searching for the Group

"So, I finished everything that you told me to do Arlette, anything else?" Carl said to Arlette, hoping to not get anymore chores to do with house cleaning or laundry. "Nope. I have a question for you... The first night you were here you had a gun on you that Ty and I took. Point is though, how good are you with a gun?" she asked him. Carl's eyes widened. If he answered correctly, he might be able to start using his gun again. It seemed to be that she trusted him a little bit since he hadn't tried to escape yet. "I've had a couple years of training. We used to live on a farm, I learned then," he honestly told her.

Arlette tossed him his gun. "You can help me train some of the others since you seem to have more than enough experience," she told the 14 year old. Carl nodded, trying not to sound too excited. "What's your story?" she asked him. "My story?" Carl asked her. "Yeah, your story. I mean, everyone who made it here has one, and you know more than half of mine since I'm pretty sure that Yasmine told you," she said. Carl nodded, confirming her suspicions. "We've been place to place. Back in Georgia, we lived on a farm till it got overrun. We've lived in a prison," Carl said. Arlette looked over at Carl. "A prison? Wasn't it overrun?" she asked him. "At first it was, that was when our group was a lot bigger. Then some dude who called himself governor got into a war with us. It became overrun by walkers. We went to Terminus but, it wasn't safe. They uh... They were cannibals," he told her. We staked out in a church for a while before finally, we were making our way to DC?" he told her. "DC? You do realize that DC is overrun right? So whatever you have going on there, you can pretty much forget it," she told Carl. "No, there's a good reason for it. If we can get to DC, then this, this will be all over and we can go back to living our normal lives," he told her, causing Arlette to stop and face him. "A cure?" she asked him. Carl nodded at her. "If you'd like, tonight, you and I could go out searching for your group. They can stay here with us for a little while. You can trust us Carl. We aren't like those others where we just kill people for the fun of it," she told him. "Alright," Carl said.

The two left that night in search of finding Carl's group. A careful Arlette, made sure that the gate was closed, leaving the town as the two ran off into the night in search for Ricks group. "Do you think that we'll find them? For all we know, when you ran into that herd, they could've gotten bit," she told Carl. "But they aren't. We've all survived this long. We've been on the road off and on again since this started. Nowhere is safe," he told her, his voice filled with disgust on how she could say such a thing about his family, the people that he had been with since the beginning, Hershel's farm, the prison, all of which they acquired new friends. "You know what, let's just go and find my group," he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it was short I didn't have much time to write this.


	3. Hot Wiring and the Church

The two walked in silence, the sound of their shoes clacking was the only thing that kept it from being awkward. Arlette stuck her hands inside the pockets of her shorts. "So," said Arlette. "What happens if we can't find them?" she asked him. "Then I guess I'll stay with your group," Carl replied looking to the ground. Last time we all saw each other was at the church, so, they could have possibly killed the walkers and kept refuge there," he told her. "And if it's still overrun?" she asked. "Then we run like we always have. We'll make it back, and stay there till the walkers clear, hope that my group can find us," he told her. She could feel the honesty travelling through Carl's voice. The two went back into complete silence. Carl's figure stood a little shorter than Arlette, her 5'6" figure would be able to tower over him anyways. Her build was just the same. Her muscular body would be able to pull Carl along with her. 

Nighttime seemed to pass by quicker meaning that daylight would be coming in a few hours. Carl noticed a car and pointed over at it, running towards it. "Don't run that fast Carl. I'd rather you not get bitten," she whisper yelled at him. Carl shrugged it off. "You know how to hot wire a car?" he asked her. "Yeah," she said, almost too quickly for Carl to catch it. He gave her a weird look. "What? Before it all started I was a young adult. Of course I knew how to hot wire a car," she told him, her voice stayed down in the whisper it had in it to begin with. She opened the passenger side door. Once the two made sure that no walkers were in the car, she got under the dash board. "Keep watch," she told him. Carl gave off a nod before staying where he was beside Arlette. Arlette took two of the wires in the car, rubbing them against each other. The 2007 ford fusion finally turned on and Arlette mentally cheered. "We need to break the back headlights. The front ones, they should be fine. We'll break those on the way back," she told him, breaking the first one, and then doing the same to the second. 

She hopped into the driver’s seat, closing the door. Carl slipped into the passenger seat, shutting his door and leaning back. "That church that you told me about... It's off the highway give or take. How you managed that one without a herd was a miracle. Let's just hope this goes just as well," she told him. She pressed down on the pedal, feeling the car move. "There are shops around there. We can head into one and gather a few supplies at their pharmacy," she said. Carl nodded, a smile showing up on his face. 

The two reached the church by morning. They had already stopped by the pharmacy and camped there for the night. The church seemed deserted though. No walkers or signs of life seemed to be showing up. Arlette got out of the car shutting the door. "So, this was the church that you were talking about? Seems to me that it's deserted," she said, walking up the open steps to where the closed door was. She jiggled the handle. The door was locked. There was someone inside. She took a peek through the window, seeing a couple of bodies there. If there were survivors, they would have been alerted and hiding right about now. She called Carl open. "Doors locked. Have any idea why?" she asked. Carl responded with a nod. "The priest who let us stay here always locked the doors at night,” "That means that someone's in there," she told him. Realization came upon Carl's face. His group might be in there.


End file.
